Eric Eldon sent me an email asking about my statement that Facebook has blocked the majority of iLike’s musician pages. I shouldn’t have said that because it is incorrect. I simply assume that Facebook has blocked the majority of them because a number of them have disappeared as Justin Smith reported. Given that Facebook expects brand owners to create the pages, Facebook could technically block all of iLike’s musician pages.
iLike would be able to argue that this isn’t a justified action given that the brand owners created the iLike page and in doing so agreed to have their music promoted via Facebook’s pages. No matter what position is right here, one thing is clear: Facebook will have difficulty enforcing their Pages policy. As I wrote last week, Facebook Pages could soon become a target for spam. While Facebook may have users that are moderating the Pages, it will be difficult to manually filter hundreds of thousands if not millions of Pages.
Currently, Facebook has no system in place for confirming that you are a brand owner except for those that are trying to create music pages. While I Mashable has published screenshots of Facebook requiring users to upload a copy of their identification prior to publshing a page, I wasn’t asked for verification after creating a band or after creating a Howard Dean page (which I have since removed). Facebook is going to need to enforce the validity of their Pages if they want their new offering to succeed.
Otherwise, owners of popular brand pages can use brand popularity to advertise their own services. I wonder what Facebook will do to resolve this issue. Have any ideas?
Update
Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike, posted the following update regarding the music pages. Apparently they removed the pages on their own.
Hey this is Ali from iLike.
Re the comment about iLike, here’s the short story… not really much of a story, actually:
Within hours after creating the Pages on Facebook, we found a couple of bugs in the way we had auto-created them. It was our mistake, so to err on the safe side, we voluntarily “unpublished†(but not deleted) all the pages.
We’ve been “republishing†them over the past few days.
Ali Partovi
CEO, iLike
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Hey this is Ali from iLike.Re the comment about iLike, here's the short story… not really much of a story, actually: Within hours after creating the Pages on Facebook, we found a couple of bugs in the way we had auto-created them. It was our mistake, so to err on the safe side, we voluntarily "unpublished" (but not deleted) all the pages. We've been "republishing" them over the past few days.Ali PartoviCEO, iLike
Comment by Ali — November 12, 2007 @ 10:27 am
I suspect the wheat and the chaff will be separated by the audience. Users generally have a good eye to figure out which pages are garbage and which aren't without much trouble. While there might be 100 Starbucks pages initially, the true page will boil to the top Wisdom of the Crowds style (see James Surowiecki).
Comment by Erik Giberti — November 12, 2007 @ 10:47 am
Well, there were already 2 "unauthorized" Mashable pages up by time I got to it. I reported them 2 days ago and they are still up with no response. Oddly enough, I just created another Mashable Facebook page and it worked fine. Now there are 3, but this is the official one: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1880744970...Where's Facebook on their response time?
Comment by Adam Hirsch — November 12, 2007 @ 11:08 am
Hey this is Ali from iLike.
Re the comment about iLike, here's the short story… not really much of a story, actually:
Within hours after creating the Pages on Facebook, we found a couple of bugs in the way we had auto-created them. It was our mistake, so to err on the safe side, we voluntarily "unpublished" (but not deleted) all the pages.
We've been "republishing" them over the past few days.
Ali Partovi
CEO, iLike
Comment by Ali — November 12, 2007 @ 11:27 am
I've just spoken with iLike about their pages: They took some of their pages off the site temporarily due to an internal bug. Those pages will be back up. Facebook hadn't taken any action.
Comment by Eric Eldon — November 12, 2007 @ 11:55 am
Well, there were already 2 "unauthorized" Mashable pages up by time I got to it. I reported them 2 days ago and they are still up with no response. Oddly enough, I just created another Mashable Facebook page and it worked fine. Now there are 3, but this is the official one: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1880744970...
Where's Facebook on their response time?
Comment by Adam Hirsch — November 12, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
I’ve just spoken with iLike about their pages: They took some of their pages off the site temporarily due to an internal bug. Those pages will be back up. Facebook hadn’t taken any action.
Comment by Eric Eldon — November 12, 2007 @ 3:55 pm
I'm still not clear on the policy. Let's say I create a page called Unofficial Radiohead Fan Club. I'm not misrepresenting it and the unofficial fan club is a real entity.
Comment by Tom — November 13, 2007 @ 5:51 am
I’m still not clear on the policy. Let’s say I create a page called Unofficial Radiohead Fan Club. I’m not misrepresenting it and the unofficial fan club is a real entity.
Comment by Tom — November 13, 2007 @ 9:51 am